BONDS

Sylas pulled his cloak tighter against the wind and stepped into Durnhollow’s market square.

Thirty years had passed since he had first crossed these stones as a silent, furious seven-year-old with a journal too heavy for his hands. The winter air still bit, but he had learned long ago how dwarves carried cold—not as insult or enemy, but as plain fact. Let it sharpen you or let it shrink you. Durnhollow had little patience for the second, and neither did Torin Stonefist.

Sylas moved through the square without hurry, his gaze working the way a soldier’s did—counting bodies, exits, blind angles, and the few faces paying more attention to wagons than wares. Snow hissed in thin sheets across the stone. Boots ground slush into gray streaks. Somewhere a mule brayed like it had been personally offended by the weather.

Iron and smoke threaded through Durnhollow as merchants bundled in furs shouted over stalls stacked with tools, winter apples, lamp oil, and racks of steel that caught the weak daylight in hard blue lines. The scents of molten metal and burning coal drifted down from the forge quarter above, mixing with horse sweat and the sweet bite of spiced ale from a nearby taproom. Somewhere in the churn, a street performer worked a lute against the wind, the melody slipping in and out beneath the clang of hammers deeper in the city.